Lilies of the Valley
by Larkspur Quince
Summary: A partner piece to "Hesse, Bridges, and the Manuscript of a Heart", if things had happened from a different perspective.


She runs a hand gently along the silky white dome-shaped buds of the little green plant, marveling at its texture.

_Let's plant Lilies-of-the-Valley, _he said. _Lily, like my mother._

Well, who was Ginny to argue with that? So they'd made a small garden, most of which was devoted to this strange little flowering thing Harry loved so well. Ginny never really loved Lilies-of-the-Valley, not in the way her husband did—but then again, they didn't exactly hold much meaning for her, other than the fact that they bore a similar name to the mother in law she would never meet. She liked flowers with more color: bright orange tiger lilies, shot through with red; blue poppies; soft white tulips; cherry trees, which sprinkled their little pink tears on the ground like spring baptism. In her opinion, lilies-of-the-valley were a little on the boring side.

Until she found the letters.

They had dated back almost ten years, between Harry and Draco Malfoy. Ginny couldn't believe her eyes when she accidentally knocked the trunk over, the one above his shirts in the closet. And there they all were, taunting her, mocking her, laughing at the years she'd wasted with a man whose heart she never truly held. They had rained down on her like angels giggling. _Look, _they cried, _look at us! We've been hiding almost ten years, but to make up for the time please let us plaster ourselves over everything you thought was life._

All the letters had been mailed in crisp white envelopes, inconspicuous and harmless- looking. Ginny had never even suspected.

She can't even remember what she had been reaching for the day the trunk fell from its shelf. And she didn't mean to pry, really, because she knew the chest contained all the things that meant the most to him: trinkets from his parents, from his best friends, memorabilia from school and growing up, even effects from the war. And though she meant to just gather everything back up and place it respectfully back in its box, her hand fell on a heavy vellum card, decorated in handwriting finer and more graceful even than hers. As she turned it over in her hands, she found that it was in fact one of the invitations she and Harry had sent out for their wedding, all those years ago. Without meaning to, Ginny's fine blue eyes traced over the words she found written on the back of it:

_H.,_

_Don't marry her. There is still a chance for us to be together. I am begging you, and you know I never beg: run away with me. I do not know what will become of me if I have to live this way without you. Please._

_D_

At first she hadn't the foggiest idea to whom "D" might have referred, but she was alarmed and in disbelief. She began to tear through the letters, desperate to know the answer while being terrified of it, unaware she was plunging into ten years of her husband's secret history. Most of them were little messages written on bits of scrap paper here and there, but the words were clearly anything but scraps.

_D,_

_I have to marry Ginny. After everything she and her family have done for me, it's only right. I owe them my life. I owe her my future. And she loves me—she loves me better than I deserve. Don't ask me to do anything you know I won't._

_ -H_

These little notes were dated about a month before Harry had married her. They were the earliest she could find, but judging from their verbal weight, they were not the first communication Harry had had with "D". None of the letters used any names but hers. It was infuriating! Didn't she have a right to know what indecent woman had tried to win Ginny's husband?

It wasn't until she came across a thick wad of older parchment, bound together—with black ribbon, no less—that she discovered no woman had tried to ruin her impending marriage at all. Ginny carefully unwrapped the fat stack of correspondence, allowing the memos and their existence to soak into hers.

_H,_

_Life without love is like a tree_

_Without blossom and fruit._

_Khalil Gibran had it right when he said that. You know I miss you. You know I can't stand to be a winter tree with nothing more than dead limbs, which is all I am capable of being when you're not here. I'm living in the shade. My branches will bear no fruit._

_Please come when you can._

_-Draco_

Tears welled in Ginny's eyes as she realized that what she held in her hands were a decade of love letters, love letters to someone else. Love letters to Draco Malfoy. It was a fact only confirmed as she continued reading, sunken in pajamas on the floor of their closet. She came across a more recent one, barely more than a year old:

_Draco,_

_I don't know how much longer I can live like this. I thought I could do it, I thought I could make Ginny happy. But I can see in her eyes that she isn't. I'm not. I haven't been truly happy in all the time we've been married. The fondest memories of our marriage are when I went to you and spent the weekend in your arms, in your bed, my hand in your hand. I don't know what I'll do now._

_ Harry_

Some of the letters contained images and expressions clearly meant only for Draco's eyes—they were things like he had never said to her, and that she never expected to hear from him. But it was evident that he and Draco Malfoy—of all people, good god—were in love, were living in a plane of existence she could never hope to reach.

She could have accepted it, that her husband was in love with another man, she thought. They had made something of a pleasant, if not happy, life together, and she was in no real rush to cash it in for something better. Then she found one of the oldest messages in the bunch, from Harry to Draco.

_D,_

_I have a garden full of lilies-of-the-valley. I have decided that they are the best way to keep you with me, even when you're not. They are beautiful and white, like your skin, and they beam radiance when light is shed upon them, in much the same way your hair does. They're soft to the touch, like fingers on your face. And I find that there is something playful about the way the bell-shaped blooms will never look you directly in the eye. Their coyness reminds me of yours, when we first met (actually met, not when I hated you). I feel like they're about to laugh at me and say something really shitty yet hilarious, like you do. And if I'm going to be over-the-top and melodramatic here to show you how I feel for you, I'll say that their color is true and white, like the love I bear for you. Now we are a cliché. See you soon._

_I told her I planted them because they're called Lily, like my mother, and because their stems are green, like her eyes. I know it was a weak lie (green stems? That is generally that nature of plants…), but I would rather have Ginny think I am a drama queen than to have her be hurt by this. I may not love her like I love you, but I am still married to her, and I hope she can't see through me._

_ -H_

Ginny rolled herself into a ball and started to cry. She lay there for three hours, on the beige carpet of the walk-in closet, holding herself with her hands around her knees. She had realized that, in the big box of Harry's life, there was nothing that would have reminded him of her.

When Harry came home from work two hours after that, his wife had neatly repacked the trunk and set it on the kitchen table with the lid open, the fat packet of love letters resting peacefully on top. She herself was making dinner for one. Harry took one look at the chest on the table and the red of his wife's eyes and knew immediately what had happened.

"Oh, Ginny," he'd said, looking stricken.

Two days later, they agreed it was best if he moved out.

"I don't hold it against you, Harry," Ginny told him calmly. "I know you love him. You don't owe me."

And while Harry was horrified by Ginny's breakthrough into his other life and mesmerized by the control she had about it, he couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief.

A few weeks later, she heard he had moved into Draco's apartment. She found she didn't really mind. _His heart is where it always should have been._

As Ginny runs her slight finger over the beautiful white lilies-of-the-valley in her garden, she finds she is actually a little taken with their beauty, the bright whiteness of them. They're soft and ethereal, and upon closer inspection, she understands how they could be a very romantic flower. Suddenly Harry's words come back to her: _I find that there is something playful about the way the bell-shaped blooms will never look you directly in the eye._

She notes that this is true. But the little blooms aren't playing with Ginny. It feels as though they see her and they are overburdened with the shame of the secret they have hidden from her all these years; they are too bent to turn and face her, to see that shame reflected on her pretty features. Or do they turn their little noses away from her like she is something to be ignored? The lilies-of-the-valley were Harry's plants, that's so, but he had always looked fondly on Ginny and watched out for her—he had never ignored her. These small flowers had no right to turn away from her, from shame or distaste. She was not going to accept this. Not from the flowers that had been all about Draco's Malfoy under the pretext of reminding Harry of his mother. Not from these flowers who were raised in soil well tilled with lies.

Ginny goes inside. On the grocery list held to the fridge by a magnet, she writes: _Tulip and Welsh poppy bulbs._


End file.
